Ravenna Place

Longest post ever if a picture is worth 1000 words

2006-01-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

Finally had time to post some pictures.

The Shat in the Cat

2005-03-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

I told myself I wouldn't be one of them crazy cat blogger people, but this is an exceptional case.

Magellan started throwing up Saturday night. We thought it was just a bad hairball, but he kept puking into the morning (He must have thrown up at least ten times by now). We didn't know what was wrong, but then I saw something curled up moving in his vomit. It didn't seem a big deal; all we needed was some worm medicine, so we hauled our butts over to Petsmart, and mixed the stuff in with his food. But the little guy wouldn't eat it.

Hoping that he was just not hungry, we decided to leave him be until he felt like eating again. I tried feeding him later in the night, but he still wouldn't eat. I stayed up with him for the whole night and didn't get a peep out of him. He wouldn't eat or drink or even move. He just laid in the hallway, looking miserable. And then he threw up again three times the next day.

I was clueless and depressed at this point, plus I had to go to work. So I left Magellan by himself, still looking miserable. Grace got home and called me at work, saying she was going to take him to the vet because we were out of ideas.

The nice people at Banfield Animal Hospital prodded every one of his orifices, and injected him with a giant needle of goodies. Good news: negative on the worms. Bad news: he still has testicles? You can check back next week on the status of Magellan's little ballsies. Oh yeah, they also gave Grace a bill for $275.45 which I'll have to pay back. Needless to say, donations are welcome.

After work on Monday night, at the vet's recommendation, we went get some baby food and an oral syringe at QFC (for those of you who don't know, QFC is like Stop & Shop for rich people, except we're not rich, just lazy, so we give them our money anyways). Many thanks to the pharmacist who was working late and supplied us with the syringe. (Another aside: we went to Walgreens too, but they were closed. What happened to "The world's not perfect, that's why there's Walgreens." Well fuck you too Walgreens.)

We diluted the baby food and fed it to Magellan with the syringe. He didn't like it very much, which obviously meant he was sick because that turkey and gravy smelled delicious. No wonder Robocop ate that crap. Sorry, I got sidetracked again.

So I stayed up with him again, and also gave him a prescription laxative. Morning came and Magellan was looking much better. He purred for the first time since he became sick, and he even ate a little bit of food on his own. By that afternoon, he was looking real good and was running around the bedroom like his usual self. He was also desperate to be with Peanut so I let him out of the bedroom, hoping that he recovered from whatever was ailing him, and left for work.

After Grace picked me up from work that night, we came back to the apartment greeted by a nice skidmark on the carpet. We knew it had been left by Magellan because he's had the medicine and he's always been bad at cleaning his own butt. While I was getting the stain out, Grace went over to Magellan sitting next to the coffee table. She lifted his tail to check his butt and we were shocked by the sight of a 2-foot long piece of ribbon hanging out of his butt! I pulled it out of him and saw there were six inches of it still inside him.

There you have it, mystery solved, case closed, etc. So a tough lesson learned: don't leave crap around the apartment.

Despite the huge amount of money I have to fork out, I'm just happy the little turd is back to his old goofy self. But remember this if nothing else: donations are welcome.

It's the Jesus, Stupid!

2005-02-21T03:28:00.000-08:00

When you're up at 3:30 AM, there's pretty much nothing to do except ponder the higher purpose of life. I happened to remember the time I was asking Ray what people do when they're content with their lives. I don't know if he was being sarcastic, but his response rang true to what I really want to do: "You wander the earth and help people." Call me liberal, Secular Humanist, or whatever dirty label you prefer, but I'm sick of waiting on money-grubbing Republicans, and/or hypocritical evangelical Christians to make the world better.

Since I don't have a $3 billion windfall to donate, and I sleep 12 hours a day, I figured that it's best to donate my skills and time to a non-profit organization. But as I was looking online for non-profit IT positions, what I found (read line above Requirements) only reaffirmed my basis for the whole exercise.

WorldVision's short-sighted policy of only considering candidates of Christian faith is a prime example that intolerance stemming from religious zealotry is holding back society's full potential. This made me angry, angry and tired. So much so that I don't feel like putting any more effort into the job search tonight. If you can find me opportunities with non-profit orgs which are not blinded by ideology, please let me know. And sorry for getting all political and stuff.

Number of useless statistics in this post: 1

My Cat's Breath Smells Like Cat Food

2005-01-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

I figured that there's nothing better to do than start a blog on this most holey of days. In case you are unaware or have forgotten (as I fully expect), today is my birthday. The big two four. Damn, it's pretty sad considering I had a cheezy blog back in 2000, and now five years later, I still have nothing interesting to say.¹ Maybe you should come back next year.

¹This reminds me of the greatest movie quote/moral of all time: "[Some] things change. But some things don't."

Also, I apologize to the blogger.com community. I know that such self-deprecating remarks should have been made on livejournal instead, and that blogger.com is reserved for losers who actually think they have something important to say and thus be taken seriously.